When Paul Cullen takes his seat at Old Trafford with his family on Saturday night to watch his nephew, Mike Cooper, walking out in Warrington's primrose and blue, his mind will drift back a decade to the start of the renaissance of one of British rugby league's proud old clubs.

Cullen had played in a reasonably successful Warrington team in the 80s and 90s, and even worked on their commercial staff as his career wound down in the early Super League years, playing a part in the move to replace their traditional nickname of Wire with the more marketable Wolves. But in 2002 he had moved into coaching and was working in Cumbria with Whitehaven, and watched in growing alarm as his former club appeared to be sliding towards relegation.

Off the field, some of the foundations of the current success that has seen Warrington reach their first ever Grand Final, in which they play Leeds Rhinos on Saturday evening, had already been laid. Planning permission had been secured for a huge Tesco to be built in the centre of town, which would in turn fund a new stadium, and a low-profile music promoter called Simon Moran had joined the board. But on it, Warrington continued to underachieve horribly.

The decision was made to sack David Plange, the second coach to lose his job that season, and to call Cullen back from Cumbria. "We had to win a game, possibly two," Cullen reflects. "If we didn't, Warrington would have been relegated. It's taken 10 years to get to this point even having stayed up that year. Imagine how long it would have taken if we'd gone down. It really is anyone's guess."

The dwindling band who advocate Super League's licensing process would perhaps point to that traumatic year as evidence of the perils of relegation – to the competition as a whole. Warrington have traditionally been among the elite if never as consistently successful as Wigan, St Helens or even Widnes, their three local rivals in what used to be south-west Lancashire – and still is, to a sizeable proportion of the club's supporters who refuse to join the Cheshire set. But now, with that new stadium built and recently extended to a 15,000 capacity, and Moran – or Moranovich, as those supporters know him – a hugely influential figure in the background, they have become one of the model clubs of the competition.

There have been a number of other significant moments along their journey from relegation danger to Old Trafford. In 2003, Cullen's first full season in charge, they fulfilled his stated goal of leaving Wilderspool, their crumbling old home known as the Zoo, and even secured a first play-off appearance. Their first season at the Halliwell Jones, naming rights to the stadium having been sold to an upmarket local car dealership which is definitely more Cheshire than south-west Lancashire, was mixed, but the following year Moran sprinkled some stardust by funding a short-term move for Andrew Johns, the Australian scrum-half who was then the undisputed superstar of the game.

Johns's stint was typical of Warrington's position at the time, however. He starred in a memorable debut against Leeds, but two weeks later was powerless to prevent a heavy home defeat by Hull in the first round of the play-offs.

The Wolves developed an unfortunate habit of starting each season with great expectations, only to underachieve when it mattered, to the great delight of Wigan and especially St Helens.

Cullen has every right to feel he was let down by players in whom he had placed considerable trust, most obviously Lee Briers, the wily and wonderfully watchable stand-off for whom an Old Trafford debut will represent personal fulfilment. It is hugely to Cullen's credit that he is not bitter about the fact that it needed a change of coach before Briers, and the club, finally delivered on their potential.

He was driven out in acrimonious circumstances after a home defeat by Castleford in the summer of 2008, and initially succeeded by his assistant James Lowes – who has since revived his old partnership in the Bradford front-row with Brian McDermott at Leeds, providing another subplot this weekend. But it was only when Moran decided that Lowes was not the answer after a dreadful start to the following season that he made surely the best decision of his decade behind the scenes.

Tony Smith, an Australian who had endured an unhappy World Cup in 2008 as the England coach having made his reputation by coaching Leeds to Grand Final victories in 2004 and 2007, was tempted by the opportunity to return to club management, especially at a club with such potential.

Success came more quickly than either Smith or Moran could have envisaged: a Challenge Cup run through the summer of 2009 earned Warrington their first Wembley appearance since 1990 and victory over Huddersfield secured their first major trophy since 1974. They retained the cup the following season, and claimed a third Wembley win in four years by beating Leeds this August.

But it is an Old Trafford appearance, and the right to call themselves champions for the first time since 1955, that Warrington's supporters have been craving.

It has already been quite a year for Moran, who is probably best known in the music business for his leading role in Take That's triumphant comeback – Gary Barlow helped the Wolves celebrate one of their cup wins – but who was also responsible for the Stone Roses playing their secret comeback gig at Warrington's Parr Hall in May (Ian Brown, the lead singer, is a fellow Warringtonian, who has occasionally referred to a soft spot for the Wire).

Moran rarely gives interviews to the Warrington Guardian, never mind this one, even though he is a regular in Smith's post-match press conferences, sitting quietly at the back, usually in jeans and a T-shirt having watched the game from the terraces – which he used to do at Wilderspool with his dad, having been bitten by the bug when attending the 1975 Challenge Cup final at Wembley (a 14–7 defeat to Widnes).

During one such press conference this season, an older member of the press pack was surprised to see an "I am the Resurrection" sticker on the diary Moran was holding. "I didn't know he was religious," the journalist pondered later – clearly unfamiliar with the Stone Roses.

Cullen is young enough to know better, but even he inadvertently used the title of their second album in describing Moran's involvement at Warrington, which followed an earlier financial rescue by the Greenalls brewery and leisure group, as "part of the second coming".

"It's been a bit of a slow burner," Cullen added. "I was always aware of Simon's fanatical support of the club when I worked there in various roles. But it was only when he came back around 2002 that you could sense something was going to change, and he was going to be a new, dynamic leader.

"The demographic of the club has completely changed since the days when I was commercial manager at Wilderspool. Then we had very male-orientated fan base but now, thanks to the move to the new stadium and all the facilities, old Warrington and new Warrington have come together in support of the Wolves. I genuinely feel this could be the start of a Warrington dynasty."